AustLit

'This article examines the claims of truth and authenticity that accompanied the 2009 release of the Australian film Cedar Boys (Caradee, 2009) in its representation of Lebanese-Australian youth as a cultural minority group in Australia. Critical responses in Australia were enthusiastic about what was interpreted as a positive representation of a cultural minority group that is often maligned in mainstream Australian media, particularly since the race riots in Sydney in 2005 which saw violent clashes between groups of Lebanese-Australian and Anglo-Australian youths. This article argues that, far from transcending the cultural stereotypes that abound in the media, Cedar Boys reinforces a cultural `atrophy', characterized in the film by the young Lebanese-Australian protagonist's failed pursuit of a blonde white woman who, in addition to her sexual allure in the eyes of the young man, represents a seemingly unattainable `trophy' of mutual cultural understanding between mainstream and minority in the bleak landscape that is mapped out in the film for the Lebanese-Australian youth.' (Author's abstract)